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Suitable Secondaries?

DJ Arcatek

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I've been wondering for a while now, but what would you guys consider to be a good secondary? Assuming you -main- Falco, of course. Yes, I realize this could be put into the questions thread, but I feel like this topic could very well be expanded on and there's a lot of room for input.

Some of you may not LIKE the idea of having a secondary. Understandable. But there are some of us that don't like the idea of getting gayed on bad stages for Falco or have a hard time with certain matchup.

Recently, I've been kind of leaning toward G&W or Marth, but I wanna hear what you all have to say. And, please don't point out the obvious and say MK >_> Aside from him.
 

#HBC | Ryker

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Before I went to MK, I did second G&W. Covers ICs and Pikachu (Pika being the harder match-up) which are the match-ups I'm looking to cover. Also plays well on RCruise and Brinstar.
 

teluoborg

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If you don't wanna hear about MK then it's all specific, what are the matchups/stages that give you trouble as Falco ?

Also lol@Ryker's avatar, 2gud.
 
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Snake is still a good pick for ICs. Better match-up with pikachu. Is not wrecked on stages and adapts quite well to them. Extra insurance because you are so much harder to kill and need fewer hits to get a stock.

Peach is an odd pick, but one that can work well if you take the massive amount of time to figure out how to use her well.
 

ZTD | TECHnology

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:lucario: One of the few who beats Pikachu soundly and goes even with Ice Climbers. Not nearly as tech skill heavy as Falco either.

:snake: Beats Ice Climbers soundly, and doesn't do bad vs Pikachu. Also handles some of the other annoying top tiers like Diddy and gives you another decent option against fighting MKs.

:marth: Does well against Pikachu and gives you a chance vs ICs. Hard to learn though.

:warioc: Does decent against both Pikachu and ICs but gives you a better shot on "gay" stages if you're fighting MKs or whatnot.

:gw: Does well on the gay stages and does well against Pikachu. ICs beat GW though once they learn the MU.

:metaknight: .........:metaknight:..........:troll:
 

infiniteV115

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If you're playing Falco, obviously the biggest problem with the Pika MU is that one grab can bring you to like 110%. This wouldn't be a problem if you could avoid grabs easily, but let's face it; that's asking a lot against a good Pikachu.
Thus, I would advise against Snake as a secondary because Pika can still screw you over with one grab; he'll get you to like 80% then nair you offstage. I know 80% for Snake isn't the same as 110+ for Falco, and it's harder to get a grab on a Snake anyway. But I don't really think there's a point to choosing a secondary to cover your bad MUs if that secondary has the same problem in said MU, even if the MU isn't as bad.

Marth seems like a good idea. He does well against both Pika and ICs, retains the good MUs against high/top tiers that Falco has, and now you have a better chance if an MK CPs you to Brinstar/RC.

Edit: Ok, that may not get interpreted correctly. I'm not saying that you shouldn't choose Snake because he still gets wrecked by Pikachu (because he doesn't). I'm saying that you shouldn't second Snake because Pika will remain annoying as ****.
 

MARLX

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Having secondaries lowers the falco players skill and what would the point be in useing falco if you wouldn't be able to use full potencial. The falco player would then not face they're fear of pika. DEHF uses just falco because he knows that it's pika, i'll go full force with falco. And he wins. So do you know what i'm saying?
 

StarFruit

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Marlx ur incredibly wrong. Just cause pika is the worst matchup doesn't make the others easy. Metagame is increasing amazingly at this point...things like pit..yoshi..many heavyweights are really not easy to play. Pit can out camp falco and can kill at rather low percents...even yoshi lives to atleast 150 vs falco. Secondaries are important.

And I second wario...great for those heavy weights...good air mobility...and easy kill potential on stuff like pika. And waft should be a free stock

:phone:
 

DJ Arcatek

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^Exactly. Using other characters doesn't exactly limit your main character's potential unless you stop playing them ENTIRELY. ESAM has been using Ice Climbers a lot more recently, but his Pikachu is still top notch and the best in the states. He has ICs because they're fun to use and to handle any matchups that his Pika can't.

SK92 has a pocket MK/Wario somewhere too, but his Falco is still great. It's not always about one matchup or one stage, it's about expanding your character options to confirm a better outcome for your matches.
 

#HBC | Ryker

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Having secondaries lowers the falco players skill and what would the point be in useing falco if you wouldn't be able to use full potencial. The falco player would then not face they're fear of pika. DEHF uses just falco because he knows that it's pika, i'll go full force with falco. And he wins. So do you know what i'm saying?
And now there is no doubt in my mind that you are simply a troll.
 

swordsaint

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to me, the idea that so many falcos thing they need a secondary makes me question falco's placement on the tier list. I don't think Falco needs a secondary, to me he does fine against IC's, he has the tools. A difficult match up to learn but once you know the ins and outs, far less annoying than previously thought.

and I've constantly gone through my opinion of Falco/Pika being one of the most overrated matchups in the game.
 

M@v

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Icies **** GW, bad idea. GW is the easiest character in the game for ice climbers to cg.

:metaknight: obviously

:marth: is probably the most solid choice along with snake. Beats pika and does ok vs ice climbers. Just gotta learn to space well

:snake: Good choice overall along with Marth, and I know you have MVD you could learn from.

:peach: is my personal choice behind mk. Goes evenish with pika, but is really good vs ice climbers(yay float). I hate ice climbers more than pika, plus they are more common than pika players. I also have a pikachu player to practice vs pika with. The main draw back with the princess is she has a high learning curve. If mk's banned I'm using her as my secondary.

:lucario: owns pikachu, icies I dont know. Not too hard to play either.

:zerosuitsamus: apparently does good in falcos bad mus, but also has a high learning curve. I remember riddle saying once that if your not going to main zss, don't play her.

If your worried about :marth: too, stay away from peach and lucario. I just play falco vs marth because it might be disadvantaged, but its a very winnable mu unlike pika and icies :3

Or I just go mk :awesome:
 
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to me, the idea that so many falcos thing they need a secondary makes me question falco's placement on the tier list. I don't think Falco needs a secondary, to me he does fine against IC's, he has the tools. A difficult match up to learn but once you know the ins and outs, far less annoying than previously thought.

and I've constantly gone through my opinion of Falco/Pika being one of the most overrated matchups in the game.
Your right. Falco honestly doesn't need a secondary. Pikachu match-up is completely doable if you can avoid that stupid grab. ICs themselves are rare picks for people and if you learn it, you can **** people who think it's an auto win vs falco. Stages themselves take only time to learn to adapt to as well.

The thing is that picking up a secondary can still help you when you are not extremely talented with your character yet. Certain match-ups often times are taxing or not as easy as you might like it. Take Falco vs MK or Snake. These are two match-ups that Falco can easily handle, but I often times feel safer going with Snake than falco. One of the major reasons is that Snake is much more able body about taking hits and dishing it out. One mistake with Falco early can really set him back and make it difficult to take the match back. Snake on the other hand might really only need a single good stock with living to high percents and deal out a few hits to really take the match back or get a good lead.

There is also the tactical advantage of using another character people might not be familiar with to help gain you the advantage. A bit of an outlier, but take armada vs hungrybox at pound 5. Young Link as a surprise counter to jiggs turned out to be pretty effective. While people have told me countless times that at higher levels of play match-up experience is rather negligible (people should have MU exp). At that low/mid level of play though, switching characters can hold a bit more power. I remember a few times where I had close matches with snake/falco, but when I went DDD, it was almost close to a blow out match.
 

Micklem

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How about diddy?
I hear he beats Pika, Icies and Marth (+1 for each).
Just sayin, he seems like the obvious choice if you're up for sending time on a secondary. He arguably gets better mu's against those three than mk.

I've never used him though so I may be wrong. Is there anyone who uses Falco/Diddy? (Pelca?)
 

swordsaint

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Your right. Falco honestly doesn't need a secondary. Pikachu match-up is completely doable if you can avoid that stupid grab. ICs themselves are rare picks for people and if you learn it, you can **** people who think it's an auto win vs falco. Stages themselves take only time to learn to adapt to as well.

The thing is that picking up a secondary can still help you when you are not extremely talented with your character yet. Certain match-ups often times are taxing or not as easy as you might like it. Take Falco vs MK or Snake. These are two match-ups that Falco can easily handle, but I often times feel safer going with Snake than falco. One of the major reasons is that Snake is much more able body about taking hits and dishing it out. One mistake with Falco early can really set him back and make it difficult to take the match back. Snake on the other hand might really only need a single good stock with living to high percents and deal out a few hits to really take the match back or get a good lead.

There is also the tactical advantage of using another character people might not be familiar with to help gain you the advantage. A bit of an outlier, but take armada vs hungrybox at pound 5. Young Link as a surprise counter to jiggs turned out to be pretty effective. While people have told me countless times that at higher levels of play match-up experience is rather negligible (people should have MU exp). At that low/mid level of play though, switching characters can hold a bit more power. I remember a few times where I had close matches with snake/falco, but when I went DDD, it was almost close to a blow out match.
Yeah I mostly agree with you. I just wanted to point out that in a discussion about suitable secondaries, answering 'none' was a valid option.

The thing about Pikachu though, is that people are too caught up in 'if pikachu gets the grab', but what if we get the grab? The first thing I always say to that is, does the grab kill? The answer is no. And after that I say, so what's different about our grab? Looking at the facts, the grab attributes in this match up are like so:

Pikachu
- 1 grab = 100+ %
- 1st grab must start at 21+%. (We can easily camp an edge until these percents)
- Can't start at 52+% (someone correct me)
- Doesn't kill
- Doesn't stop Falco from landing his chain grab (this is important)

Falco
- 1 grab = 60-70+% assuming correct follow up, potentially more with a hard read
- 1st grab can start at 0, no limitations beyond recklessly attacking and losing our opening
- Leads to tech chase/edge guards (honestly there's potential for kills here against a character like Pikachu)
- If landed, stop's Pikachu's chain grab. This is important because what everybody thinks makes the match up for Pikachu is his chain grab. IT IS PREVENTABLE. If we land our grab, they're OVER THE 50 ODD PERCENT THAT THEIR CHAIN GRAB STARTS. Meaning? We can use platforms to platform camp. Assuming proper planking, the chance of them landing the grab on a platform is negligible. They are forced to lose the chain grab or be timed out. And during this, we can rack up chip damage by attempting to predict/read their choices to rack up damage. Probably won't get much, but considering that the damage on us we 'give' them is less than half they'd otherwise get....

Outside of that I think Falco has it over Pikachu.

I also think that Marth/Falco is even.
 

#HBC | Ryker

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to me, the idea that so many falcos thing they need a secondary makes me question falco's placement on the tier list. I don't think Falco needs a secondary, to me he does fine against IC's, he has the tools. A difficult match up to learn but once you know the ins and outs, far less annoying than previously thought.

and I've constantly gone through my opinion of Falco/Pika being one of the most overrated matchups in the game.
Stages .
 

#HBC | Ryker

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Icies **** GW, bad idea. GW is the easiest character in the game for ice climbers to cg.
Because ease of CG matters SOOOOOOOOOOOO much against a good ICs. The point is not to get grabbed, not to get grabbed and hope they **** up.

I'm not an expert on the match-up, but there are three ICs that go to tournaments in my area and my doubles partner mains G&W. I do not know what options ICs have to deal with G&W camping the platform on SV (assumed counterpick if FD is bannned) and I've seen that match-up more than a few times.
 

teluoborg

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- If landed, stop's Pikachu's chain grab. This is important because what everybody thinks makes the match up for Pikachu is his chain grab. IT IS PREVENTABLE. If we land our grab, they're OVER THE 50 ODD PERCENT THAT THEIR CHAIN GRAB STARTS.
Say what now ?

I think you misunderstood something : Pikachu can't CG you if YOU are past 50%, not the contrary lol.

Either that or I didn't understand what you meant. But then I've read your post 3 times and I can't figure out what else it can mean.
 

M@v

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I also cant play one character. In fact the last tourney I went to, even though I went mk the most, I used Falco, Fox, and Zelda in tournaments matches I won.
(I wasnt going Zelda to sandbag either; won a game with her in losers finals)
 

swordsaint

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Say what now ?

I think you misunderstood something : Pikachu can't CG you if YOU are past 50%, not the contrary lol.

Either that or I didn't understand what you meant. But then I've read your post 3 times and I can't figure out what else it can mean.
They can't chain grab if THEY'RE past 50% because we can camp ledges/platforms and go for chip damage. The likelyhood of them getting the chaingrab on a platform is pretty slim, and if they don't attack us, waiting for the chaingrab, they get timed out, so they're forced to attack us on the platform. in order to not lose to timeout, they have to hit us to > 50% losing the chaingrab. This is obviously assuming that we're on the same stock, or a stock ahead.
 
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So basically your saying that the only real threat is at the start of the match where both characters are fishing for grabs. After the percentage that falco no longer CGs pikachu, falco has no real business getting grabbed because we will be so elusive at not getting in that positron, focusing more on playing our favorite sort of style, keep away.

Still, the risk/threat is there. Multiple matches played and not always being on falco's best stages. A good lead can be instantly ruined if you mess up and make it difficult to get that lead back or retain it. Weigh the risks, and decide if a secondary might be a safer route.
 

swordsaint

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So basically your saying that the only real threat is at the start of the match where both characters are fishing for grabs. After the percentage that falco no longer CGs pikachu, falco has no real business getting grabbed because we will be so elusive at not getting in that positron, focusing more on playing our favorite sort of style, keep away.

Still, the risk/threat is there. Multiple matches played and not always being on falco's best stages. A good lead can be instantly ruined if you mess up and make it difficult to get that lead back or retain it. Weigh the risks, and decide if a secondary might be a safer route.
the risk is there, but thats like saying, the risk is still there of mk getting hit by a full charged ganon fsmash. If we're playing game 1, on something like battlefield. getting chaingrabbed on a platform just won't happen 9/10 times. The threat is there, but it's not as dangerous as people make out because of how it's prevented. It's prevented by doing something Falco does most of the time anyway, and that's get a chaingrab. We're playing keep away in positions that minimize the risk of being grabbed a lot. If we're playing keep away in the air and on platforms, moving around the different platforms a lot, still attacking pikachu when we can. Then we should be fine until 50%. and after that it can go back to a normal game until the next stock.

We just have to do the same thing next stock sort of, but stocks 2 and 3 work a little different to the first. Whoever takes stock 1 get's a better advantage in this match up than most, because if Falco takes stock 1, he's at a % that can't be chaingrabbed, but he can still play for the grab himself, so that when he loses that first stock, he starts off being able to play on the platforms (or camping at the edges until 21%).

if pikachu takes the first we'll you're probably screwed.

i just don't think its a hard counter like 65:35 as it's always said. 60:40 at worst. but not better than 55:45.

still, it's not a difficult concept playing against pikachu. Both parties are fishing for grabs and whoever gets it first gets the advantage in the matchup. The only real difference is that pikachu has a better chance of bringing it back from behind than falco does, but at the same time, when playing without cgs, falco is much better than pikachu in this matchup.
 

Teran

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In terms of overall statistics definitely Marth, but Marth is gay and doesn't have Falco's swag so use Snake or Lucario (if you're not a furry).

Yes, being superficial is what it's all about, it's not like I chose Falco for his tier list position.
 
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Well, to simplify a long discussion, I don't see falco having the build to reliably get much damage on pikachu from camping platforms or the ledge for long periods of time. And a fast, nimble character is certain a bit more likely to get a grab on Falco than someone like Ganon getting a hit in. Risk being there is still different than the likelihood of it happening (of which I still see pikachu getting a grab in once a stock as still very likely to happen).

You main Falco for the flashy light show teran :)
 

swordsaint

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Well, to simplify a long discussion, I don't see falco having the build to reliably get much damage on pikachu from camping platforms or the ledge for long periods of time. And a fast, nimble character is certain a bit more likely to get a grab on Falco than someone like Ganon getting a hit in. Risk being there is still different than the likelihood of it happening (of which I still see pikachu getting a grab in once a stock as still very likely to happen).

You main Falco for the flashy light show teran :)
its not about us getting the damage on the platforms, its just about doing what you can while forcing them to attack rather than grab.
 

righteousrook73

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Can anyone explain the chain grab that Pikachu has on Falco and how to avoid it? I've gathered that it's good to stay on platforms and keep away, but I'm still not sure what the grab itself is that we're trying to escape. Also, if the grab can be chained up to around 120%, then why can it not be started when Falco is at only 50%?
 

Brawlin

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I like how people have been mentioning Peach for a good secondary. :D


Peach handles ICs and Pika pretty well(which I guess are his only bad matchups) and Falco handles MK and Snake. If you actually main Falco, you probably won't be relying on her outside of those two matchups though.

But still, a :peach: :falco: combination is actually pretty good, overall.
 

Keitaro

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<3 Falco dittos :D

MK is of course the best 2ndary. Snake is also a pretty good one imo. I use him for ICs and Lucario. I use MK for Pika if they're a good pika.
 

I Dair You

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If you practice your bad matchups and get tons of experience in, you'll realize that beating most pocket ICs and Pikas are a breeze. And there arent too many good ICs or Pika mains imo.
 

M@v

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I like how people have been mentioning Peach for a good secondary. :D


Peach handles ICs and Pika pretty well(which I guess are his only bad matchups) and Falco handles MK and Snake. If you actually main Falco, you probably won't be relying on her outside of those two matchups though.

But still, a :peach: :falco: combination is actually pretty good, overall.
The only bad MU Falco will still have is Marth, its only a -1, some debate even actually.

How about a secondary to avoid the Falco ditto?

I will never do that **** unless if I'm forced to.

Bring those pocket Pika/IC's.
I just use mk or fox since I play them :awesome: Most Falcos don't know how to fight fox, especially when I'm outcamping them since most Falcos aren't used to getting outcamped.

If you practice your bad matchups and get tons of experience in, you'll realize that beating most pocket ICs and Pikas are a breeze. And there arent too many good ICs or Pika mains imo.
Most of the pikachu players I've played can't even do the chaingrab. But if you face people even semi competent enough to not drop grabs, secondaries really do help a lot.
 

Teran

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I beat a Pika in tourney once because the TV was a bit laggy.

Lucky break LOL
 

Orion*

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I think diddy is the best tourny viable character as a secondary for falco.

If I was ever to go to a MK banned event or something I would probably use that combination. Diddy covers all of falcos bad/frustrating matchups and can't be hard counterpicked as well so it's a very safe choice.
 

~ Gheb ~

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Unless you hate the IC ditto ... IC is a pretty good second for Falco imo

:059:
 

Blondie.

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Ive actually been thinking of this a lot lately, and my best idea I could come up with is lucario. First of all he takes care of pikachu, and a lot of the stages he uses are different than falcos. This is good just for variety, ya know, so you dont have to play the same stages over and over again. Also, lucario is one bamf and is quickly evolving and rising in the tiers. Trela's also the most entertaining smasher to watch imo.
 

-DR3W-

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Your best answers are

Diddy, Ice Climbers, Snake, and Marth

Whichever one you are most comfortable with DJ Jack.
They'd still be free vs Falco though... :troll:
 

V

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G&W, MK, Wario, Diddy, Snake, and Marth in order from easiest to pick up to hardest. Whether one secondary is better than the other is personal opinion unless it's MK, so you might want to make your decision based on how much time you want to put into your secondary.

:phone:
 
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